Category Archives: infoage14

This week (10-28/10-30) we were asked to make a propaganda campaign. Originally Jack, Jess, and I were going to make a dictatorship that ruled over the entire world, but Jess and I thought it would be a whole lot more fun if we divided it up Guys vs Girls. Naturally Jess and I told Jack what countries we wanted to have power over and he caved, giving us exactly what we wanted once again. So Jess and I took most of the northern countries including all of Europe, Russia, North America, Australia, and we wanted the middle east for its oil. We left Jack with Africa, Antarctica, and some bits of South America.

We created propaganda campaigns with this background story:

Jack, Jess and I use to rule over the world in harmony, until one day things went wrong. As the three leaders we were having trouble agreeing on some key issues (mostly gender related) and this caused many countries to start fighting one another. The solution: to divide up the world into Northern and Southern hemispheres. The female leaders ruling the Northern countries and Jack ruling the Southern ones. This solution worked for a little while until some of the countries broke out in war because they wanted to defect to the opposing hemisphere. The new solution: Have one day a year that the countries can vote to defect to the other side. Leading up to voting day these propaganda campaign would be shown on TV trying to convince each of the countries to either stay in their hemisphere or defect to ours.

I would say these turned out to be quite entertaining! The most fun part was watching Jack struggle to say sexist things without going overboard. He kept looking at Jess and I for approval. He would write a line into our google docs script then look up from his computer at the two of us with this expression on his face like “too far?”

These were exciting to make and not particularly hard to do either! Enjoy!

Our assignment this week (9/30-10/2) was to create a radio broadcast. There was really no instruction to follow other than to produce one, so we decided to take a futuristic approach to the assignment. We thought that it would be fun to make a “live” radio broadcast of an alien invasion. We met in the ITCC to choose a room in which to record the script we created, and let me tell you, I never knew how important acoustics are until we began this project. Each room we tried out was either occupied or the “acoustics were all wrong” according to Jack. Once we found the perfect room in which to record, I literally could hear the difference between the recordings from different rooms. We chose to do our recordings in the ITCC Mezzanine.

Once we began recording it became apparent that Jess could not be anywhere near the mic, because of the abundant amounts of giggling that was coming out of her! To her defense it was quite entertaining listening to Bruce pretending to be the Alien Overlord.

Once we were done recording the script Jack edited it all together and uploaded it to soundcloud.

For our final project Jessica Reingold, Jack Hylan, and myself decided to make a documentary about digital identities. The term digital identity has just recently come into being, and our goal for this project was to get people discussing what this term means, and more specifically what it means for them personally. We interviewed UMW staff, UMW students, and even a guest speaker who made an appearance at UMW to talk about digital history topics. We interviewed twelve people total and our questions included:

What is a digital identity?

How many different digital identities do you have?

-if more than 1 continue to question 3.

-if only 1, go to question 5.

Which digital identity is your least favorite?

Which digital identity is your favorite?

What is your digital identity (your favorite one) like? How would you describe it/them?

On a scale of 1-5, 5 being the same person to your real identity(personality) how similar is your digital identity to you?

Why do you make your digital identity this way?

Which do you prefer? Your digital identity or your in person identity?

Once we finished our interviews, we edited the footage using Final Cut Pro and iMovie. Lets just say this step took quite some time! I think we spent more time in the ITCC than in our own homes those few days! But, it was well worth the effort. I may be a bit biased, but I think the documentary turned out to be amazing. It ended up being around 16 minutes, which is a little long for a documentary project of this size, but everyone’s answers were so vital to understanding the concept we felt we had to include as much as we did.

This week (11/25-11/27) we made our own infographics. For those of you who have never heard of or used an infographic before, OxfordDictionaries.com provides a good definition of what exactly they are. This websites defines an infographic as “a visual image such as a chart or diagram used to represent information or data.”

Our group decided to make an infographic about pumpkin pie. Since Thanksgiving was just two days away it seemed fitting! We wanted to provide a visual timeline about the history of pumpkin pie.

I had never made an infographic before, and honestly wouldn’t have even known where to start. Luckily, I had two computer wizes in my group who were able to show me what internet tools to use and how it should be properly created. Infographics are not only (hopefully) easily readable but intriguing ways to relay information.

As a follow up post to my groups final project, we also wanted to post the full interview that we did with Dr. Poska. This is completely unedited so it includes all of the mistakes and awkward laughter.

For our final project, Jack, Emily, and I decided to make a documentary about digital identities. We decided interview UMW students and staff in order to see what people at UMW think a digital identity is and how their digital identity may differ from their “offline” identity. We conducted twelve interviews that involved about eight questions:

What is a digital identity?

How many different digital identities do you have?

-if more than 1 continue to question 3.

-if only 1, go to question 5.

Which digital identity is your least favorite?

Which digital identity is your favorite?

What is your digital identity (your favorite one) like? How would you describe it/them?

On a scale of 1-5, 5 being the same person to your real identity(personality) how similar is your digital identity to you?

Why do you make your digital identity this way?

Whom do you prefer? Your digital identity or your in person identity?

Our questions turned out to just be guide lines, however, since the interviewees tended to answer more than question within their answers. Once we had conducted our interviews, we edited the documentary together using iMovie and Final Cut Pro in the Media Lab in the ITCC. Since we had twelve interviews to go through, we could not use everyone’s answer for every question, so we picked the most unique or common answers for the final version of the documentary. We took on quite an ambitious task, and after about seven to eight hours of editing, it turned out great! We are very happy with the final product, and although the video is already sixteen minutes long, it could have been much longer.

We want to also thank Andy Rush in DTLT very much for letting us use all of the production equipment including a light kit, a lapel microphone, a camcorder, a DSLR camera, and a green screen.

Carla, Katie, Lauren and I decided to make a documentary about the use of online databases and research for our final project. We started with the idea that the internet has increased access to information for research, and we narrowed our topic down from there. We decided to interview a professor who we know has done research for a book recently. We interviewed Dr. Poska from the History and Women and Gender Studies departments about her experience as an academic and as a professor with online databases. Dr. Poska talked a lot about how digitized primary and secondary sources has made her research easier because she no longer has to go to every little town to access their records (she can now research in her pajamas). As we have discussed in this class before, the internet has increased accessibility to a lot of information, and databases that offer primary and scholarly secondary sources are among the most best the internet has to offer to college students and scholars.

The week before Thanksgiving break, we interviewed roughly 10 people about digital identities in general and about their own digital identities. Our line up included students and staff, particularly staff members on DTLT since education technology is what they do. We even got Audrey Waters (the wrtoer who visited our class) to sit down with us for an interview. Our set up was much more elaborate than anything I had used for a project before. Andy Rush let us use the green screen in the incubator classroom, light kit, lapel microphone, tripods, a camcorder, and a DSLR camera for our documentary. It was fantastic seeing him get excited about students using all of the equipment he makes available for students to use.

We filmed for 4 days and then began to edit the documentary using iMovie. In order to share all of the video files with Jack and Emily, I had to take all of the files we transferred from the memory cards on to my back up drive and upload them to Mega. I could not use Dropbox since it would not accept more than 1 file. As I discovered, Mega gives users with their free account 50GB, which was awesome since our video files were all over 500MB.

We aren’t finished editing yet but I’m very excited to show the class what we have done for this final project.

Last week classes (11-11-14/11-13-14) consisted of discussing our digital identities. But what does your digital identity actually consist of and how does it affect you? Well, to explore the answer to this question you could always google yourself. Now we could all make a joke about the sexual innuendos of phrase like “googling yourself” but in all seriousness your digital identity, including what appears on Google, can be life altering. We discussed this topic in great detail, the first week on my digital studies 101 class. We talked about how what you publish online can follow you for the rest of your life and affect many outcomes. When I was asked why I should care about my digital identity this is the answer I gave:

“The job market is shrinking before our eyes. It used to be that a person just needed to be high school graduate to get a well paying job. Now it seems like you have to have a degree from a prestigious college, with a minor or concentration in a specialized field, an inside connection to your place of interest, and be attending a graduate school to even get considered for decent positions these days. What will not help our already slimming chances of finding our dream job or any job for that matter, is inappropriate images or content appearing on Google when an employer searches our name. I know that my father, being a business owner, searches applicants on Google before doing anything else, to judge whether they are a good candidate for his company. Now, since most employers look you up on Google before actually conducting an interview, your “digital identity” or what appears on Google can be crucial.

If they search your name and find photos of you smoking weed, drinking, partying, or doing other unsuitable activities, it doesn’t matter how delightful you think you can be during your interview, they pretty much already have their minds made up. Your digital identity holds significant weight on a social media based society that is becoming evermore engrossed in the web based world.”

Personally I try to keep my social media somewhat “pg” just because I do have employers and professors following me on one or more forms of social media. As I brought up in class, it has been drilled into our heads from an early age that what we post online affects us greatly. Because of this type of upbringing I feel as though I have always monitored my online image, which I am very thankful for. When I google myself I find my old gymnastics scores, my pinterest boards filled with future wedding ideas and yummy recipes. I also find my facebook which is private unless I add you, my twitter account which is mainly used for school, and some old school projects which I am very proud to display.

Overall I think my digital identity is somewhat more tamed than my actual personality is in reality. So for me, unlike so may others, I think my digital identity is actually a positive aspect of my appearance.

Digital identities can affect you in so many ways. Now, more than ever, people need to be wary of what they post online.

Last week classes (11-11-14/11-13-14) consisted of discussing our digital identities. But what does your digital identity actually consist of and how does it affect you? Well, to explore the answer to this question you could always google yourself. Now we could all make a joke about the sexual innuendos of phrase like “googling yourself” but in all seriousness your digital identity, including what appears on Google, can be life altering. We discussed this topic in great detail, the first week on my digital studies 101 class. We talked about how what you publish online can follow you for the rest of your life and affect many outcomes. When I was asked why I should care about my digital identity this is the answer I gave:

“The job market is shrinking before our eyes. It used to be that a person just needed to be high school graduate to get a well paying job. Now it seems like you have to have a degree from a prestigious college, with a minor or concentration in a specialized field, an inside connection to your place of interest, and be attending a graduate school to even get considered for decent positions these days. What will not help our already slimming chances of finding our dream job or any job for that matter, is inappropriate images or content appearing on Google when an employer searches our name. I know that my father, being a business owner, searches applicants on Google before doing anything else, to judge whether they are a good candidate for his company. Now, since most employers look you up on Google before actually conducting an interview, your “digital identity” or what appears on Google can be crucial.

If they search your name and find photos of you smoking weed, drinking, partying, or doing other unsuitable activities, it doesn’t matter how delightful you think you can be during your interview, they pretty much already have their minds made up. Your digital identity holds significant weight on a social media based society that is becoming evermore engrossed in the web based world.”

Personally I try to keep my social media somewhat “pg” just because I do have employers and professors following me on one or more forms of social media. As I brought up in class, it has been drilled into our heads from an early age that what we post online affects us greatly. Because of this type of upbringing I feel as though I have always monitored my online image, which I am very thankful for. When I google myself I find my old gymnastics scores, my pinterest boards filled with future wedding ideas and yummy recipes. I also find my facebook which is private unless I add you, my twitter account which is mainly used for school, and some old school projects which I am very proud to display.

Overall I think my digital identity is somewhat more tamed than my actual personality is in reality. So for me, unlike so may others, I think my digital identity is actually a positive aspect of my appearance.

Digital identities can affect you in so many ways. Now, more than ever, people need to be wary of what they post online.